Systems which automatically distribute customer contacts or calls (generically referred to as “ACD”) are often employed in telemarketing environments in which agents at agent stations answer many different types of calls including telephone calls and other types of customer contacts (e.g., VoIP, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messages, other Internet contacts, etc.) from customers during a work day. As referred to herein, an ACD may be referred to as an automatic call distributor or an automatic contact distributor because the ACD handles a variety of communication media. In other words, the ACD handles many forms of communication, not just telephone calls in which a potential customer speaks with an agent. The term “ACD” may apply to any type of transaction processing system, and need not apply only to dedicated telemarketing systems or automatic call distributors. In some known ACD's, the agent may receive certain information about the type of customer call (i.e. contact) on a visual display at the agent set when a call or contact is distributed to the agent. An ACD may be any such system which performs these functions and, for example, may employ a wide variety of architectures, including integrated centralized systems, distributed systems, systems using one or more personal computers or servers, etc.
In some embodiments, ACD's may be used to support a number of different vendors in their telemarketing effort, and in such marketing environments, the agent is typically in communication with the customer or potential customer with respect to or on behalf of a particular vendor. The next call or contact that the agent processes may be on behalf of the same vendor or on behalf of a different vendor. In another embodiment, ACD's may be used exclusively by or on behalf of a single vendor such that all of the contacts processed by the agent involve one particular vendor.
Often, a customer call is distributed to an agent that involves interactive voice dialog. This means a normal two-way verbal exchange. An ACD, however, may also distribute a non-voice dialog contact or call to the agent. This does not involve direct two-way speech between the agent and the customer or caller. Non-voice dialog communication may be, for example, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messaging, Internet, etc. and the like. This is becoming more common as Internet traffic and electronic sales transactions increase. Handling the non-voice dialog contact may require a specialized device or subcomponent of the ACD. In this situation, the agent may typically view text on a display screen that the caller typed in or transmitted. In response, the agent may provide information to the contact or request information from the caller via the keyboard or other input device. Essentially, the dialog between the agent and the caller occurs on a display screen. Further, the agent may handle multiple calls. For example, the agent may typically handle two to five (or more) simultaneous non-voice dialog communications or transactions, which may be presented as two to five separate dialog windows on the display screen, which windows may, for example, be tiled or layered. Of course, the number of simultaneous transactions may vary significantly.
The rate at which agents handle calls, and hence the number of calls handled by an agent, may have an impact on the call center efficiency and economic viability of the facility utilizing the ACD. Of course, the quality and content of the call transaction is important, but strictly from the perspective of call handling volume, known systems do not optimize calls directed to the agents based on an agent's predicted availability. Further, known systems do not account for the mix of inbound and outbound calls routed to an agent.
A need exists to permit inbound and outbound call schedules to be optimized so that an agent may handle a maximum number of transactions.